Purpose and best uses
Deep Research is the Professional tool for a broader, self-contained research memorandum. It is intended for questions that benefit from more extensive source retrieval and a developed explanation rather than a brief response or a continuing chat. Use it when you have a defined issue, know the relevant jurisdictions or source collections, and want a longer piece of research to inspect and preserve. A comparative question, a detailed doctrinal inquiry, or a complex issue with several subquestions can be a good fit.
Deep Research is separate from Conversation's Deep Thinking mode. The former begins with a standalone research request and does not rely on a chat thread's earlier messages as its context. The interface offers a question field, source selections, an optional attached document, a deeper-thinking option, and citation-hop controls. These choices shape the research request. They do not guarantee a fixed number of useful sources, a fixed completion time, or a particular legal conclusion simply because a more intensive option was selected.
How to use it well
Prepare a complete research instruction. State the issue, jurisdiction, relevant dates, important facts, and the structure you want in the response. Identify subquestions and ask the system to separate established support from uncertainty. If a document supplies the factual setting, attach the correct version and inspect the document-coverage information after submission. Do not assume the tool knows facts from a different conversation or from a file you uploaded elsewhere unless the current workflow explicitly supplies that context.
Select sources deliberately, and use deeper research settings only when the assignment warrants them. More retrieval and model work can require more time and usage than reopening a saved answer or reading a source directly. The response should then be reviewed as a research memorandum: identify its principal conclusions, inspect the authorities supporting them, and examine qualifications or conflicts. Follow citation and source links rather than judging quality from length alone. A long answer can still omit a decisive exception or rely on an inapplicable source.
Example and practical limits
For a fictional professional assignment, you might request a memorandum comparing approaches to a defined issue across selected courts, asking for the main authorities, meaningful differences, and unresolved questions. The useful result would be a structured starting point for further analysis, with sources you can inspect. If the task later turns into a sequence of factual follow-ups, Conversation may be more convenient. If your next goal is a proposed filing or memorandum tailored to particular facts, Draft provides the document-oriented workflow.
Deep Research outputs are saved in My Research, with supported unfinished progress recorded separately from completion. Read any unfinished or error label carefully; the final checks may not have run. Reopening a saved result does not refresh the law or complete an interrupted generation. Also, a model name printed in an interface label should not be treated as a complete description of the routing behind a request or as a quality guarantee. Use the actual result, source evidence, and recorded status to assess the work. Deep Research is best used for a substantial, clearly bounded inquiry whose supporting material you are prepared to read and evaluate.
A helpful final review asks whether each subquestion in your original instruction received a supported answer. Mark any gaps for follow-up rather than assume that a lengthy memorandum must have covered them. This keeps the review tied to the assignment instead of the apparent polish of the prose.